 For those of us who know a friend or loved one who has been swindled into joining an MLM We wonder how the person can get trapped in such an obvious scheme If you're someone who was once stuck in an MLM, you may be wondering how you didn't see the science earlier Although many people point out the shady techniques of MLMs like Lula Rowe, Dolterra, and Arbonne, there's a big piece of the puzzle that's missing and that's the psychological aspect Something I spend many hours each week studying are various thinking flaws that all of us humans fall victim to Many of these are cognitive biases that lead to us becoming the prey of different fallacies Today, we're going to be talking about how MLMs exploit these cognitive flaws to keep people trapped But more importantly understanding these fallacies can help us make better decisions in all areas of our lives It's also crucial to understand that there are external fallacies that we fall for as well as internal ones While MLMs are able to convince people that it's their fault. They aren't making money We're also going to discuss an internal fallacy that simply magnifies the first one when we're able to first acknowledge What's happening and then take a step back. We can make better rational decisions Not only will it help us better understand people who are victims of MLMs But there are many other benefits as well Even if you've never been a part of an MLM or know anyone who has been being able to identify these Psychological flaws can help you with your career Relationships and your finances since learning about these flaws with my own cognition I've been able to make better decisions and it's made my life run a little bit smoother And I hope it can do the same for you But before we get started if you're new to the rewired soul make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell here We use critical thinking and practice skepticism to improve our decision-making skills and overall well-being Also, I won't be citing any specific books in this video But if you want to learn more about the topics that I cover I will be providing some of my favorite books on the subject down in the description below For many of us and developed capitalist nations were driven by the idea of meritocracy and hard work in one 2016 survey roughly 64 percent of Americans say that they believe that Determination and hard work are the most important success factors from a young age We're all taught that if we work hard we're going to succeed, but unfortunately MLMs take advantage of this MLMs start by advertising to people that there's going to be an easy way to make some extra money And it's one of the reasons they target stay-at-home moms They discuss how beneficial the product is and how it basically sells itself Not only will you be able to work from home while taking care of the kids But you'll be able to make thousands of dollars a month Within a few months some alarm start going off in the new MLM recruits head They followed all the strategies that the MLM taught them, but they aren't making any sales They've messaged all their friends and family members on Facebook But not only do they get no sales, but they ruin a few relationships along the way They sit back and wonder if I signed up Why is it so hard to get others to sign up and then they may start thinking that they got suckered into a scam During the MLM team calls and seminars some of these new recruits may bring up their concerns But now the narrative changes although they were told that this was going to be simple They're now being told that they aren't working hard enough The money makers in the MLMs tell people that they only get out what they put in and if they work harder They can become extremely successful The new recruit goes from being skeptical about their original decision to sign up to believing It's their fault while some may call this a clear sign of gaslighting There's something less obvious at play and that's the just world fallacy The just world fallacy is something many of us are affected by when we live in this meritocratic society This fallacy is the misconception that people who are losing at the game of life must have done something to deserve it It's easy to see how this plays out in MLMs If you're not selling enough essential oils You're not working hard enough. If you just message more people on your Facebook friends list or invested a little more into your business You'd succeed. The problem with this is that it's unfalsifiable How could you ever run a proper experiment to see if this product or business model doesn't work? If the only answer you get is that you're not working hard enough as someone who worked in sales in my early 20s I can tell you it's not just MLMs who do this to people Sales teams have some of the highest turnover rates because they're all about making money And if you're not selling they say it's your fault What's worse is that we fall for this just world fallacy in other parts of our life and think it's the reason we keep getting into Toxic relationships or can't pay our bills The reality is that the world is much more complex than that And there's much more that goes into the decisions that we're making as well as what's happening in our lives Lastly, there's an internal fallacy that we fall for that's more about us than it is about them While MLMs may be able to exploit this fallacy the members don't even realize how often it happens for those who are in MLMs, it's easy to look at the investment you've made and use that as Justification to invest even more when you put yourself into the shoes of the person who joined the MLM You may relate to their experience with how they feel trapped when someone joins an MLM There's an investment of both time and money for most of these MLMs You have to pay money upfront for the product and then the person who recruited you makes more money by requiring you to have A monthly stock you've also invested a lot of time in this thing Where you've done their trainings and online seminars and you've spent hours reaching out to people to try to get them into Your downline after you had your doubts and they told you that you're just not working hard enough You're still thinking about giving up, but then you remember something you remember that you've already spent hundreds or even Thousands of dollars starting this business Maybe you tapped into your savings or move money around to make this happen You may have even had arguments with your significant other about starting this venture So you can't give up now This is what's known as the sunk cost fallacy and it's something that can happen to any of us The sunk cost fallacy is when we chased after something just because we've already invested in it This is something that economic students and investors are taught But this also plays a massive role in behavioral economics Think about that beater car that you used to have and you put a bunch of money into it Right after a repair something else broke and you just had to fix it again because you already invested in it Soon you realize you've spent way more money on repairs than the car is actually worse And that's because of the sunk cost fallacy. We also see this in relationships much like MLMs People stay in abusive toxic relationships way too long because of the time and effort that they've put into them If you've been with someone for months or years, you may not want to feel like those months or years were wasted So you decide to stay in the relationship Meanwhile, you're wasting more time chasing the sunk costs So what can we do to avoid these two cognitive flaws? Well first we need to realize that although karma is great in theory It's not always how things work out Anyone with life experience can look at multiple events in their life where they did everything right but got a bad result Sometimes it's not a just world Sometimes good people fail and bad people succeed other times we can work until we're blue in the face But it doesn't guarantee that we're gonna become millionaires when it comes to some cost I've personally benefited from realizing when to pick my battles many times What's spent is spent and I'm never getting it back while we may be able to get a refund on some purchases We can't get a refund on time So to counteract that just world fallacy and some cost fallacy Sometimes the best thing we can do is just take the loss and move on If not, we just invest more time and money into something that isn't paying off The only thing that we're truly investing in is our own suffering Alright everybody. Thank you for checking out this quick video essay I've been meaning to talk about MLMs for a long time and I could do a million of these diving into Psychology and just all sorts of interesting things about it I know some of you have been waiting for me to make a video on this So here's the first one if it does well if you guys like it, I will do some more But yeah, I really wanted to make this one even though it was a little bit shorter than some of my other Videos like I've been having so many ideas lately and I just don't know which one to do So I want to start doing like shorter videos and just kind of knock them out So anyways expect more videos because I need to get some of these ideas out of my head on the paper Then on the YouTube if you're not by the way if you're not if you want like sneak peeks of all these videos Make sure you're following me over on medium because I write all of these out in essay form Post them on medium and then I record a video when I get some time But there's also some stuff I'm posting over on medium that I'm not even making a YouTube video for So if you want more of me for some reason, I'm over on medium I love writing writing. It's my original class. So that's what I like doing But yeah, and make sure you're following me on social media so you don't miss out and all that kind of stuff But if there's any topics or anything like that that you want me to dive into Let me know and yes, I am still going to record something for spooky season I wanted to get this out because it's just been on my mind But anyways anyways, I'm gonna let you go now. You're all great But I'm gonna I'm gonna let you get back to your thing Anyways, if you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up if you're new make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell And a huge huge thank you to everybody who supports the channel over on patreon And as I mentioned, uh, if you want to learn more about the topics I covered check the description down below There are affiliate links to the books that I love on this subject of better decision making Seeing these like cognitive biases we have and all that stuff. All right. Thanks again for watching. I'll see you next time